report on bone graft appointment

Let us begin with winsome.

In reference to Emma Kate, of course.

This girl leaves rooms full of smiling people in her wake.

So sweet her countenance.  So dear her person.

Our appointment?  Dr. Sampson is a lovely man.  We so enjoyed meeting with him, and he was kind, gentle and patient with Emma.  She was nervous about the xrays and he was wonderful and even stayed in the room with us talking to her as the machine beeped.  Emma Kate was fine as long as she stared deeply into my eyes while I held on to her dear little leg as if I was holding her hand.

There is good news!

How intricately the Lord crafted His Emma Kate.  While her lip was a bilateral cleft as was the cleft of her palate, it is not so with her gum line.  Emma Kate has a unilateral cleft through her gum line!

What does this mean?  Simply that only one side of her gum line is clefted and thus we only need to graft bone onto one portion of her mouth, not across both sides!  This is wonderful news indeeed!

It also lends credence to the question of the clefting being a result of amniotic band syndrome, not two separate "things".  When a cleft occurs it usually is symmetrical in terms of being unilateral or bilateral from the front to the back.  With amniotic band syndrome, the clefting becomes haphazard.  I'm going to check back in with our geneticist to see what she thinks now that we have new information showing the cleft to be irregular in nature.

It doesn't really matter, it is more for my own curiosity.  Either way, our Emma Kate is simply perfect to us.  Truly and wonderfully made. Fashioned in love and grown in the grace and goodness of the Lord.  Purposed for now and created with good works planned for her in advance!  She is His beloved, made to delight in Him and bring Him great glory.

Dr. Sampson is going to join Dr. Sidman in our July 25th surgery to extract a tooth that needs to come out to allow a better outcome on the bone graft surgery.  Great to fit things in together.  He will just pop in, pull it out, and then hand-deliver it to us in the waiting area to do the "tooth fairy money deal" for her.  How cute is that?!

And surgery?  December or early January.  Jim and I can pick the date, and then schedule.

So, little Emma Kate has a lovely fall to enjoy NO SURGERIES!  I'm so glad for her.  We so longed for her to be able to simply enjoy setting sail to school.  She has craved school since coming home.  A gracious gift to have a long stretch for her of simply living life, no medical procedures involved!

And that's the news from Lake Woebegone.  Where the children are above average and the weather willy-nilly.  :)

Love,
Sara